The present invention relates to a governor reset for a low oil trip condition on an EMD locomotive governor and, more particularly, an automatic reset for use in conjunction with an automatic engine restart system.
Railway locomotives are off service for substantial periods of time and are generally shut down when they are not going to be in use for extended time periods. Since some locomotive systems may be harmed if the engine is shut down for too long, there are automated systems designed to stop and restart an engine automatically in the absence of personnel. Whether an engine is being started automatically or manually there are engine protective devices designed to sense certain conditions in an engine's systems during start up and running which will shut an engine down under certain conditions. Unfortunately, and especially after an EMD locomotive engine has been shut down for a long period of time, transient conditions on start-up may be sensed by such protective devices and result in the engine being immediately shut down again. This condition defeats the advantage of an automatic engine start/stop system (AESS) and may require the need for personnel to be available to restart such an engine by overriding the protective devices.
In these protective devices of Electro-Motive Division of General Motors locomotive engines (EMD) there are manual resets which require the presence of qualified personnel to restart the engine, thus often defeating the advantage of an AESS system on such engines. One such device is associated with Woodward engine governors. These governors sense low engine oil pressure and if it is too low the governor shuts the engine down. As it does this it moves a plunger from an operating position to a tripped position which must be reset manually. This essentially defeats an AESS system.